This invention relates to television systems, in general, and in particular, to a television system having a flat display panel.
Television (TV) is the most common household electric appliance and constitutes a universalized medium for broadcasting audiovisual information. Recently TVs have been used not only as a broadcast medium, but also as computer monitors, as playback equipment for a video-tape recorders (VRTs) and digital video disks (DVDs), and as a digital video interactive (DVI) medium, thereby substantially broadening their range of use.
Historically, cathode ray tubes (CRTs) were used as TV display devices, but more recently, flat panel displays, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panel (PDPs), and organic light emitting displays (OLEDs) have begun to be used as TV display devices, and are rapidly replacing the CRTs as the TV display device of choice.
Some of the benefits of using flat panel displays as a TV's display device include its small thickness, low weight and the fact that a much larger display area can be provided, compared to those of a conventional CRT. With the rapid, continuous increase in available display screen sizes, the demand for “wide screen” TVs has increased correspondingly.
However, since a TV set includes not only a display device, but also a loudspeaker and a tuner integrated into a single unit, when a wider display screen is desired, the entire TV set must be replaced with a new unit. The replacement of the entire TV set is needlessly expensive, and entails discarding expensive components that are otherwise still entirely functional, and thus constitutes a profligate waste of resources.